Movie Scene
'Royal Tenenbaums' is superb portrait of dysfunctional family

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (Rated R for profanity, sexuality, violence). Four Stars. (Excellent) Director Wes Anderson scores with this quirky, funny tale of a dysfunctional family of geniuses who learn not to over think everything in their lives. Starring Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, and Anjelica Huston. Directed by Wes Anderson. Touchstone Pictures, 103 mins.

Wes Anderson is the director of the equally strange and endearing films "Bottle Rocket" and "Rushmore," both of which he co-wrote with "Tenenbaums" collaborator actor Owen Wilson. As in those films, he has created a wonderfully detailed universe populated by unpredictable and eccentric characters."Tenenbaums" is set in a kind of fairy-tale New York — home to the unusual Tenenbaum family. The patriarch, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), is an unscrupulous lawyer who, 22 years earlier, abandoned the family after divorcing his anthropologist wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston).

His children were all marked geniuses at a young age. Chas (Ben Stiller) proved to be a financial wizard. Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was an award-winning playwright before she was out of high school. And Richie (Luke Wilson) won the U.S. National Tennis Championship three times before he was 20.

Now they are all unhappy adults, having never again achieved the kind of success they had as youngsters. By coincidence, they are drawn back to the Tenenbaum nest in New York at the moment Royal drops back into their lives, announcing he only has months to live.

What he wants is to reconnect with the family he left behind. He wants to get to know his children and grandchildren, to somehow win back their love. But his kids still harbor resentments, even as they deal with their own crises.

Anderson and Wilson create delightfully unexpected characters, who make intellectualized self-pity hilarious. As Anderson's film examines the tyranny of heredity and birth, he also offers a foursquare message about getting over your past and focusing on the present.

While his cast includes both Wilson brothers — long-time friends from his early days in Texas — Anderson branches out in his casting, with splendid results. In particular, he draws an Oscar-caliber performance from Hackman, who makes "Royal" a hilariously self-absorbed monster who proves — like Shrek — that even ogres need a little love in their lives.

He also elicits deliciously detailed comic creations from Paltrow, Stiller, Bill Murray and Danny Glover.

"Royal Tenenbaums" is the season's tastiest Christmas treat: a comedy about family that is not for the whole family, one that blends the human and the just plain strange in ways that never fail to surprise.

Rated R for profanity, sexuality, and violence.